“In great power comes great responsibility.” It may be Spidy’s Uncle Ben who made this quote popular, but I say, it was not his original.

I knew the man who said it WAAAAY before Spiderman came into the big screen and made million of bucks. Yes, I knew the man. And my knowledge of this man was through this picture and tidbits, which were mostly trivial.

The picture. The man who squats in front of a fly pen and handles a chicken stag on his right hand while holding a cigarette on the other, is the unpopular but original blabber of this quote. There are a lot of humorous but admirable traits of this man who calls himself – Toting. To begin with, let me tell you about his profession. He was a rebel in the 70’s, a politician in the 80’s, an active NGO member in the 90’s and currently serving as a hammock-lying farmer in a small provincial town. I think, he is a man of irony. To prove that he came out of God's oven one second before he was told to but physical just right, let me give you some situational examples. First is, I never met a man of his age who manually labor to produce fine rice from less than fifteen rice paddies but knew how to make a neat tie. Second proof is, he taught his daughter how to correctly spell, pronounce, demonstrate, and use the word ‘C-H-A-O-S’ at the age of seven while spanking his youngest son for playing 'taksi' out of their tiangge's petty cash. And ultimately, I never knew a man realistically performed a dying act in Intensive Care Unit (ICU) while cursing himself for carrying his paralyzed right foot using his left foot.

The man. He is inconceivably a clash and no wonder the daughter also grew up to be the same. He is a rancid mango tree who always bear sweet ampalaya, as the old saying goes. This proves everything to be true. Ironically, the daughter no matter how grateful for having a father like him never let it known. Even though she is devoid of words, I know that she knows that I know that in her eyes, everything that the man had done is nothing but admirable.

How the hell did I know? I should know for I am the daughter of that cigarette-smoking-while-chicken-handling man.

I published this blog last March 28, 2006. It is exactly a year, a month and a day before my father was hospitalized. I knew that his third attack was fatal. I knew, but I was in denial. God gives chances to people to fulfill their purpose in life. Im not God, but the way I see it, He give my father enough years to see my father's children flourish. To see as where he invisioned us to be.

I find this happenstance as an eering prophetism. Every decision that I made, in my career and my day to day life, was steered towards that mournful day of May 15, 2007. As I write this blog, events come clear and every piece of random puzzle in my life and my family's, suddenly make sense.

I thought of giving of away a copy of this blog during his funeral, but failed to because of the blog site glitch that happened that time. I cannot retrieve this blog until now. Maybe God wants me to not only share this story to a few people, maybe He wants me to share it to many people. For I who speak for many daughters who are fatherless, but are seeing the world in their father's eye.